Sunday, March 27, 2011

Tainter's law: where is the physics?

JJoseph Tainter's interpretation of the cause of the collapse of civilisations is that social structures generate negative returns when they become too complex; as shown above (fromTainter's 1996 paper at dieoff.com). We could call this relationship as "Tainter's law". But what is exactly that generates this behavior? In this post, I'll try to make a simple model that explains the law.

Joseph Tainter has written a fascinating interpretation of the collapse of human civilisations in his book "The Collapse of Complex Societies" (1988) (see also his 1996 paper) Collapse is a common event: it is the stuff history books are made of. The mighty empires of the past; from Sumeria to the Soviet Union, have all collapsed at some point. Yet, we don't seem to be able to understand the reasons why collapse is so common.

In his book, Tainter examines previous studies and lists at least eleven causes (or "concauses") of collapse that have been proposed by historians. Resource depletion, catastrophes, intruders, social conflict, and others. But is there a single cause of collapse? Or are there several? Tainter looks for a single, common root of the problem and finds it in what he calls "the decreasing returns of complexity".

Starting from a well known concept in economic theory, that of diminishing returns, Tainter builds his case on historical examples. It is clear that several societies have continued to build up and maintain complex and expensive structures even in conditions where it was very difficult to find the necessary resources. An example is that of the fortifications protecting the Western Roman Empire, that must have been such a burden that we may consider them to be of the factors that brought down the Empire. And, in general, we do see that societies, including ours, build up hypertrophic and complex bureaucracies which appear totally useless; an increase of complexity that generates only a waste of resources.

The idea of decreasing returns to complexity looks consistent and reasonable. But, why do societies behave in this way? Tainter does not provide a real explanation; on this point, he seems to follow the tradition of historians to describe rather than interpret. But, if you happen to have a more physics-oriented point of view, then describing what happens is not enough. You want to know what are the inner mechanisms that make civilisations evolve towards higher complexity. What is the physics of collapse?

So, let's see if we can build a model of civilisation growth and collapse. The simplest one that I have been able to put together is the following. It is a "toy model, if you like:

The model is based on the conventions of system dynamics. The rectangles indicate stocks of something. You could say that the box on the left contains fossil fuels, whereas the box on the right contains carbon dioxide. The central box contains all the stuff the economy is made of and that is created from the availability of energy from fossil fuels: people, machinery, building, facilities, you name it.

The fossil fuel stock is processed by the economy and eventually transformed into waste, as indicated by the double edged arrows which show the direction of the flux of matter. The single edged arrows indicate how the amounts stored in the stocks affect the flow; that is also influenced by two constants: how fast the economy can extract resources and how fast resources are transformed into waste.

There are a few more points about the model; the first is that the resource stock is assumed to be finite - that is "non renewable". This is an approximation, but it is a good one and not only for our society. Ancient civilizations were based on agriculture, which is supposed to be a renewable resource. But agriculture is not necessarily renewable; it is more often a way to transform fertile land into a desert by mining a non renewable resource: fertile soil.

Finally, note also that the model assumes a feedback relation between resources and the size of the economy. That is, the more resources there are, the faster they are exploited and - also - the bigger the economy, the faster it exploits resources. These assumptions imply a "positive feedback" between resources and the economy; which is a reasonable assumption. A similar relation holds for the waste and the economy.

Now, let's go on and "solve" the model. That is, let's see how the size of the stocks change as time goes by. Here are the results (obtained using the Vensim software for system dynamics)

As you see, the stock of resources gets depleted while the economy grows. At some point, however, the flow from the resource stock has been so much reduced that the economy can't keep growing and it starts declining. In the end, all the stock of resources has been transferred to the "waste" stock.

Note that the model describes a closed system in terms of mass. There is no flux of matter from or to the outside. And, indeed, mass is conserved in the results: the sum of the mass contained in the three stocks is constant. But the system does exchange energy with the surroundings. Burning fossil fuels generates heat, which is dispersed outside as we may assume that all three boxes maintain at the same average temperature.

The main force behind the transformation is energy potential, in this case the chemical potential of fossil fuels. In other words, the left box (resources) has a thermodynamic potential higher than the right box (waste). As we know from the second principle of thermodynamics, the transformation occurs with the creation of entropy. The economy is a grand machine for creating entropy - it could not be anything else.

If you like to use the term "exergy" (the fraction of energy able to do useful work) you can say that the "waste" stock contains much less exergy than the "resources" stock; while the "Economy" stock has an intermediate exergy content. There is no direct system dynamics convention to express stocks in terms of exergy. It could be taken into account in the model, but let's not go into that - let's keep this model as a "toy" one. The important thing is understanding what makes it move.

Now, let's go back to Tainter's interpretation of collapse. What could we take as "complexity" in the model? There is not an explicit parameter describing that but, as a first approximation, the size of an economy determines its complexity. That has been the rule for all known history and we see it happening even today. With the economic crisis, some structures we could once afford - say, mass instruction, public health care - must shrink and disappear. Society loses complexity in times of decline and gains it in times of growth.

So the "bell shaped" curve that describes the cycle of the economy should also describe its complexity. Now, let's walk one further step in quantifying Tainter's intuition. What can be the meaning of "benefits of complexity"? Well, it is clear from what Tainter says that the benefit of complexity have to do with the ability of society to solve problems. In our toy model, the only problem for the economy is to produce as much as possible in terms of resources. So we can define benefits of complexity as proportional to production, that is to the rate of exploitation of the natural resources stock.

Now we can replot Tainter's idea from the data of the model, that is, plot production ("benefits") as a function of the size of the economy ("complexity"). And the result is something that looks very much like Tainter's law! Here it is. (note that in the full plot the curve is a complete loop that goes back to zero at the end of the cycle):

To compare, here is again Tainter's original plot: the two graphs are not identical, but the similarity is evident.

Now, of course what we have been doing here is a "toy model" of the economy. When I present this kind of models at conferences, usually there is someone in the audience who stands up and says, "It is too simple; it is not realistic!". The idea seems to be that I am modelling societies using a "spherical cow model" - a term used to disparage the tendency of physicists to oversimplify their model.

This is a perfectly understandable criticism, but it can be answered noting that more detailed models of the same kind provide similar results. For instance, the "world3" model of "The Limits to Growth" study leads to curves that are very similar in shape to the ones shown here.

But I think that is not the point, you can make models simple or detailed, it depends on what is their purpose. The toy model presented here is not meant to describe how real societies behave. It is meant to be "mind sized", that is able to help us understand how physical factors affect the historical cycle of civilizations. It stresses that civilizations must obey the laws of thermodynamics; just as they must obey the law of gravity.

Some consequences of the model are obvious. It tells us that as long as we base our existence on non-renewable resources, we must eventually run out of them. But it gives us also some non-obvious hint on the path we are going to follow in this cycle. In particular, the model tells us that we will likely keep increasing the size and complexity of our society even with a diminishing flux of resources into the economy. In this sense, it confirms Tainter's intuition, but it tells us something more; that is it extends Tainter's curve beyond the limit of the plot shown in his 1996 paper. It says that after the phase of increasing complexity and reduced returns, the curve will loop back and, eventually, both complexity and production will go to zero as is the economy completes its cycle based on non-renewable resources. Here is the complete plot:

But the main point is that, eventually, Tainter's law derives from thermodynamics. As we know (or should know) thermodynamics is not only a good idea, it is the law!

17 comments:

An elegant explanation of the obvious - to the rational mind, that is.Pity, humankind lives by hope and faith and for the greater part believes in progress technical, moral, or both.It's interesting to note that even intelligent people who are aware of possible future decline live by the hope that when technology fails to uphold the current standard of living, the world will gain by morality.Somehow, for peace of mind, some sort of equilibrium must be sustained. An expectation of genuine decline is too bleak to admit.

obvious, it IS all obvious. However, as somebody else said some time ago, the stone age didn't end because of a lack of stones: technology evolved to the point of being able to replace the content of the "Resources" box.

How to incorporate such game-changing situations in the model?

(keeping in mind that, eventually, we will run out of changes in the game...but that's another story...)

The last 2-D chart is reminiscent to the 3-D panarchy loops of CS Holling, et. al.

In addition to the traditional x-axis time dimension, Holling adds "connectedness" and "energy" dimensions. We are indeed at a time of intense connectedness and energy, and the next thing is the "omega phase" of release, where we fall to both a lower energy level and a lower connectedness level.

This appears to be related to HT Odum's postulate that complexity (connectedness?) is a function of energy.

The bad news is cheap energy is going a way. The good news is, so are the building inspectors and middle-managers. :-)

"Tainter-plexity" is supposed to be an anthropological model rather than a physics model.

The driving force behind it is Adam Smith's specialization effect.

Each person in a complex society becomes a niche player who washes his hands of responsibility for anything else. The shoe maker knows only how he makes shoes. The candle maker knows only how he makes candles. Etc.

In other words, the nuke plant operator (Homer Simpson) knows only how he has been operating the plant for the last N years. Tsunami's are somebody else's responsibility. Peak Oil is somebody else's worry. Not me. Not part of my specialty. I don't get paid to think deep thoughts like that. Above my pay grade.

Everyone assumes the Invisible Hand will magically take care of whatever negative effects the Adam Smith specialization system produces. Except that it doesn't. Because the Invisible Hand, like Santa Claus, doesn't exist.

That is a more fundamental reason for why complex societies collapse.

If you want to gt even more basic than that, realize that the human brain is finite. No person can possibly know everything. So giant gaps in knowledge and understanding develop among the specialized players within a complex society.

On a somewhat off-beat note, American cable TV finally started showing the European originated film, Agora,

If you haven't seen it, it's about the collapse of civilization in 400AD in Alexandria, Egypt as the library is taken down and burnt. According to the film, religious crazies take over and kill off or suppress all the rational thinkers of the time.

SB, of course we have a problem also in our brain. I think we are not smart enough to manage certain things. Exactly for this reason it is the environment manages us, not the opposite. That is, we are managed by the laws of physics; we follow the bell shaped curve because we are not intelligent enough to understand it. If we were, we would stop at some moment and say "well, this is enough, why grow higher?" And everything would be well. But, alas, it is not like that!

About "Agora", of course I have seen it!!! I couldn't possibly miss it - although I must say that I was somewhat disappointed by it. I found it too schematic - but it is still about the 5th century in the Roman Empire - one of the most fascinating periods in history, at least in my view. I am writing a post exactly on that period; but it will focus around Empress Galla Placidia. Someone should make a movie on her life!

Excellent. Joe Tainter gave the keynote at last year's Biophysical Economics Meeting and will do so again this year (April 15, 16 in Syracuse NY at SUNY-ESF). I had an opportunity to discuss these very issues with him (and Charlie Hall, et al) and he is seeking to form a stronger concept for linkage between complexity and energy flow. I hope to continue that conversation this year.

It is not just about resource depletion and self-production of the poisons that will kill us (much as yeast will do in a confined Petri dish).

It is also about control and communications systems.

Specialists in our complex society cannot communicate with one another. They use languages (and internally kept models) that are incomprehensible one to the other.

In the film Agora, the main protagonist Hypatia was unable to communicate her ideas with others, no matter how right she was (Cassandra de ja vu). Their models of the Universe and hers were in entirely different spheres that could not overlap with one another.

It is no different in our modern society. We each still occupy different levels on a multi-storied Tower of Babel. The more complex it gets, the worse the miscommunication gets.

Thanks, George. I know Charlie Hall very well - I think this kind of studies should be pursued... unfortunately it is very difficult to find founds for working on this kind of modelling. It is curious that a lot of money are spent for "solutions" (say, hydrogen a la Rifkin) and almost nothing to understand what the real problems are.

Greetings This is an excellent first step in bringing some rigor to Tainter's work. The idea of complexity has intuitive appeal, but it might be more useful it it could expressed as a falsifiable hypothesis. For instance, it might be interesting to plot your curve with some real data. The production of the economy would presumably be world GDP. But the size of the economy? You might want to looka ar Tim Garrett's work at http://www.springerlink.com/content/9476j57g1t07vhn2/fulltext.pdf to get some data for the size of the economy as whole.. It would interesting to see where we are on the curve! Some suggest that falling EROI would be a trigger for the diminishing returns, but has it happened yet?Walter

It is basically the same model, but fitted to real data. And thanks for the link - it looks extremely interesting, although it will take a little for me to digest it.

Also, about fitting to the real world, I have a paper that I am preparing where I fit the world GdP to a simple model - alas, here I face the same problem that almost everyone who works in this field faces. There is very little funding for this kind of work. All the papers I have published are done overnight - mostly by myself alone or by my coworkers in their spare time.

Mr Bardi Thanks for this attempt to put Tainter's work on a more solid foundation. The notion of complexity is intuative, but until we can put some numbers behind it, his theory is not verifiable. For instance it might be informative if we could plug in some numbers and see where we are on the curve! Along those lines, I wonder if you have see the work of Dr Tim Garrett, an atmospheric scientist in Utah. He modeled the economic activity and GHG's as a heat engine. This may provide you with some data to plug in see his paper in the journal Climate Change. http://www.springerlink.com/content/9476j57g1t07vhn2/fulltext.pdf

Good article, Dr. Bardi. Seeing the effects of the tsunami on Japan's nuclear industry (as well as direct and indirect effects on many others) bolsters Tainter's point about decreasing returns. Black Swans like this may become increasingly frequent in a changing climate, and our JIT economy will suffer corresponding impacts. Taking resource depletion into account magnifies these impacts (or vice versus).

I think there is a bit of mismatch between what Tainter proposed and what the author here is discussing. Tainter's idea is that complexity itself works against the life of the civilization AND every act of solving a problem brings the civilization a bit closer to its collapse. The author here seems to be mainly focusing on bureaucracy and how it is stifling innovation and scientific research progress. If i correctly understand Tainter's theory any act of problem solving in research domain itself should act towards ultimate collapse ( i.e. towards structural simplicity)

I think you slightly misunderstand Tainter's theory. Dr. Tainter expresses the idea that complexity rises as a tool for solving problems. Complexity has a cost (particularly in energy), but it is neither inherently good nor bad. Increases in complexity can facilitate the sustainability of a society; however, increases in complexity can simultaneously create new problems which undermine the sustainability of a society. A society collapses (rapidly diminishes in complexity) when it is economically beneficial for the society to do so. This is sometime after the marginal return on investment in complexity has turned negative. When the Western Roman empire fell, a lot of people were better off, not worse.

Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome and the author of "Extracted: how the quest for mineral resources is plundering the Planet" (Chelsea Green 2014)

Listen! for no more the presage of my soul, Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil; But as the morning wind blows clear the east,More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.(Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

Ugo Bardi's blog

This blog is dedicated to exploring the future of humankind, affected by the decline of the availability of natural resources, the climate problem, and the human tendency of mismanaging both. The future doesn't look bright, but it is still possible to do something good if we don't discount the alerts of the modern Cassandras. (and don't forget that the ancient prophetess turned out to be always right).

Above: Cassandra by Evelyn De Morgan, 1898

The Seneca Effect

The Seneca Effect: is this what our future looks like?

Extracted

A report to the Club of Rome published by Chelsea Green. (click on image for a link)

Rules of the blog

I try to publish at least a post every week, typically on Mondays, but additional posts often appear on different days. Comments are moderated. You may reproduce my posts as you like, citing the source is appreciated!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(whirlything)unifi.it